PROBLEM FOR THE 15inT[SH TAX-PAYERS 75 



than half of the whole to the workhouse, and the illness of members 

 of their family, and drink, idleness, and want of work have reduced 

 the rest to pauperism. A\'iiat an illustration of the need for thrift ! " 



So far as we have gone, the results are significantly dis- 

 appointing, but let us carry our investigation further. 



It is easy enough to give, and give lavishly, when Govern- 

 ments find the British public so yielding ; but to give judiciously, 

 to give with wisdom, and in a manner that will help a man to 

 become prosperous and not pauperise him, is quite another 

 matter. 



Mr. Andrew Carnegie, in returning thanks for the Freedom 

 of Abergavenny, conferred on him on May 31, 1907, said : " The 

 true sense of money is to help those who help themselves." 

 And we may depend upon it that that shrewd millionaire 

 knew what he was talking about when he gave utterance to 

 that pithy sentence. 



Help the Poor, not injure them. 



If it is necessary to call upon the British tax -payers for 

 £35,000,000 annually, of which about £16,000,000 are spent to 

 support their needy compatriots, let us use that colossal sum in 

 a way that will Ac/p the people and not injure them. 



The writer of a letter which appeared in the Daily Express, 

 on May 28, 1907, over the signature of " B," said— 



" If, however, the object of all sane citizens is not to pauperise, 

 then it follows that poor relief must not be a system of largesse, for 

 largesse inevitably converts the merely poor into the pauper pure and 

 simple. On the other hand, it is a national (juestion, and not a 

 question for the individual. The State provides against destitution 

 — and the Poor Laws are really laws for the destitute — mainly in 

 self-defence and for its own purposes. It follows that it is not to 

 the advantage of the State that this relief should be easy to get or 

 pleasant to retain, and that in any case the relief should itself be as 

 far as possible a remedial process. 



" As a matter of fact, however, the present system is going all in 

 the opposite direction, and just in the proportion in which it goes in 

 this opposite direction, so does the pauperising of the people proceed, 



" The vast sums of money now being expended help the respect- 

 able poor but little ; they are squandered by various bodies of 

 bumbledom in fostering and encouraging thriftlessness, idleness, 

 dissoluteness. Public money, hard-earned and often ill-spared, is 

 thrown broad-cast over those whom drink or laziness, or the neglect 

 of those legally liable to maintain them — and capable of maintaining 

 them — have rendered destitute. This money is not spent ; it 

 is wasted. And it is being wasted yearly by extravagant and 



